"He is not the most agreeable of customers," he said, gayly. "But I shall get through. Pegging away does it."
"And then to see how our papers flatter him!" cried Kitty. "How little people know, who think they know! It would be amusing to show the world the real Lord Parham."
She looked at her husband with an expression that struck him disagreeably. He threw away his cigarette, and his face changed.
"What we have to do, my dear Kitty, is simply to hold our tongues."
Kitty sat up in some excitement.
"That man never hears the truth!"
Ashe shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to him incredible that she should pursue this particular topic, after the incidents at Haggart.
"That's not the purpose for which Prime Ministers exist. Anyway, we can't tell it him."
Undaunted, however, by his tone, and with what seemed to him extraordinary excitability of manner, Kitty reminded him of an incident in the life of a bygone administration, when the near relative of an English statesman, staying at the time in the statesman's house, had sent a communication to one of the quarterlies attacking his policy and belittling his character, by means of information obtained in the intimacy of a country-house party.
"One of the most treacherous things ever done!" said Ashe, indignantly. "Fair fight, if you like! But if that kind of thing were to spread, I for one should throw up politics to-morrow."